Trainsanity in Switzerfrance

Bonjour!!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Geneva, Switzerland! I bounced back and forth with the idea because I thought the train tickets would be expensive, but then my train pass covered it! So, to Switzerland I went... FOR FREE! Yay! It was a little chilly when we arrived, but the mountains in the background were capped with snow so it was worth it!

In case you didn't know, Switzerland is famous for some neat things! The 3 biggest are

- Swiss Army Knives

- Swiss Chocolate

- Clock & Watch Making

Followed by some other important ones like cheese, skiing, Mont-Blanc, designer pens, etc

We walked the main shopping area of town all of Saturday to get a feel of the town. Here are a couple representatives: A GIANT me-sized replica of a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife and a bag of yummy truffles from a chocolate shop in town called "Sweetzerland." (Such a cute name!) I will admit one downside to Geneva... It was pretty expensive everywhere we went, but they made sure to make everyone feel better about the price by accepting most types of currency at every store! In my time in Geneva I managed to make purchases with euros, francs, and dollars! Pretty exciting! They also spoke multiple languages everywhere so getting around and talking to people was much easier than I've become accustom to. 

Part of the shopping journey included this awesome GIANT toystore that was 4 stories tall. FOUR! Why didn't I grow up in Geneva?!

At the toystore I was quite tempted to purchase Qui Est-ce? ("Guess who?" in French) But I decided a picture would suffice since I already had no space left in my suitcase.

After going back to memories of childhood, we continued our adventure and found a FANTASTIC playground! We had a little too much fun...

As night approached we made our way back to the hotel and realized how tired we were! We stayed in a hotel just on the border of France and Switzerland... I tend to get a little odd when I am tired so on the bus ride I coined the term SWITZERFRANCE... which I continued to use for the remainder of the trip. After vegging out at the hotel a bit, we took a risk and went to get sushi which seemed very questionable to do in France to me... but YOSO, you only Switzerfrance once... so I went for it, and I didn't get any rare foodborne illnesses! Hooray!

The next day was Sunday, and I got up early with a plan to be extreme tourists and see every well-known landmark in Geneva! I circled points of interest on the map I had of Geneva and dragged everyone along on my crazy journey to:

1. The Broken Chair

 2. The United Nations Building

 3. The Botanical Garden-

(Going here started a debate of the pronunciation of "Botanical" I think it is pronounced bow-tanical, while Francesca argued it is buh-tanical

4. A beautiful local park FILLED with flowers

5. The Jet D'eau

                                             ^^ I am hardcore cheesin'

I look like a mermaid... lol

6. The Flower Clock

After we saw all of this, Chelsea and Kayla decided to take an earlier train home, so Francesca, Mary, Mallory and I  continued to adventure on to the art district! While there we saw fantastic grafitti and street art, went to a great market, walked past a circus big top (complete with a "little person" selling tickets) and found a replica of the Central Perks coffee shop from Friends!

We had a great time, then headed towards the train station to begin our short 2 hour train home! 

and that's when the TRAINSANITY IN SWITZERFRANCE began...

First, we were riding along and an announcement came over the speaker laughing about animals being on the tracks so we had to wait 15 min for them to move. We all laughed at the delay and the train eventually moved on. After that, everything on the train was going well until we reached the stop before our first train connection in Lyon. Right before we left the preceding station the loudspeaker came on saying something about Lyon, we used our basic French skills and assumed the conductor said we were going to Lyon, I mean we translated the animal announcement correctly so this time we had to be right, right? WRONG. The train started moving backwards. Looking around in a panic, we observed that no French people were freaking out... so we remained calm and waited... 20 minutes passed and announcement after announcement came on and the train started going forward... then backward... then forward. Finally I decided to "parlez vous anglais?" a woman sitting near us who explained there was a fire near the station in Lyon and we had to remain on the train until the fire and other delayed trains had passed which would take an extra hour. So, we rolled back and forth in the train and goofed off for an hour or two playing cards and acting quite slap happy:

"This could be so much worse!" someone said as we laughed and shared stories of our past adventures and funny highschool and college memories. 

Little did we know, it was about to get MUCH worse.

I'm going to spare you some time and skip the minor details... but the one hour train from Geneva to Lyon ended up taking SIX hours. We finally arrived in Lyon to realize that we had of course missed our connection. We hopped on the closest equivalent train which we sat on at the station for 2 hours because it was also delayed. That train took us to a town called St. Etienne a 1.5 hours drive from where we live. 

 

We were all hanging by a thread, we should've arrived home at 10pm and it was 3am. 

When we arrived at St. Etienne we had no way of getting home and there were people everywhere, we were directed into a full room where we sat very confused for a while until I literally shouted "parlez vous anglais!!!!???" and a man that spoke decent english informed me that the train station would call us all taxis and pay for them because of the delay. We got one of the first taxis because I think the train workers felt bad for us, which made some of the other people waiting scowl at us, but I didn't care because we lived far away. I had to sit in a fold out car seat in the trunk as the four of us plus another random train-goer packed into the cab with a driver that spoke not even a tiny bit of English. I would tell you how fast the car was going, but i'll leave it at: we made a 1.5 hour train ride in 30 minutes. It was the scariest car ride of my entire life.

Now, remember how I mentioned the cab driver spoke only French? Yeah... we got to the center of our town and he told us through hand gestures that he wasn't paid by the train station to take us home. Only to Yssingeaux. Thank God Yssingeaux is a small town. We began the trek home with our tired bodies and heavy backpacks. It took 15 minutes.

We also walked past a dead cat. I wanted to leave that part out of this post, but it just helps portray how BAD our evening turned. It was a purrfect ending to our night from hell. (That pun is so morbid, but I had to do it.)

I got home and curled up in bed and slept right up until it was time to leave for class the next day.

My opinion of transportation here changed a lot that day.

Fin.